Meditation to lower blood pressure

 The practice of certain forms of meditation would have the effect of lowering blood pressure, according to the results of several studies. This decrease would be comparable to that observed when one follows the recommendations of health professionals: lose weight, exercise and abstain from salt and alcohol.

Researchers at Maharishi University of Management (home of Transcendental Meditation) and the University of Kentucky School of Medicine analyzed the results of 23 clinical trials, with control groups, conducted in 960 hypertensive subjects.1 Six of these trials involved Transcendental Meditation (a Hindu technique). 1 Six of these trials involved Transcendental Meditation (a technique of Hindu origin). The results showed that the practice of Transcendental Meditation lowered blood pressure by an average of

-5 mmHg/-2.8 mmHg (millimeter of mercury column). The results generally obtained with an appropriate diet and exercise program are -4.25 mmHg/-3.1 mmHg.

The other trials analyzed in this latest study involved biofeedback, relaxation, autogenic training, stress management and other meditation techniques applied alone or in combination. Some of these trials also showed interesting results in relation to blood pressure reduction, but it was not possible to draw a clear conclusion due to conflicting data or too small a number of subjects.

In the summer of 2007, the US medical authorities published a report2 on the state of medical knowledge regarding the beneficial effects of various stress management techniques on cardiovascular health. After analyzing the results of 55 clinical trials, the authors confirmed the blood pressure-lowering effects of Transcendental Meditation, Qi Gong (of Chinese origin) and Zen Buddhism (of Indo-Japanese origin).